Five Truths
by Raindog Bride
Summary: Five truths about each of the Dragoons of Endiness. Ongoing series of oneshots. Zieg's up.
1. Dart

**Five Truths**

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**Summary: Five truths about each of the Dragoons of Endiness.**

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He was an angry kid. The couple who took him in after the Neet disaster didn't know what to do with him, and after a few bare-knuckle confrontations with the other children of Seles, no one bothered.

He fought weird. He didn't fight _decently_, or so everyone thought. Most kids his age would make do with punching their opponent in the gut and then grinding their faces in the mud. This kid kicked people in the _ear_.

"Where'd you _learn _that?" spat one Seles boy after the fourth consecutive time that he'd been knocked in his ass in half as many minutes.

He glared down at him, shaggy gold hair falling into his stony eyes. "My mom."

**0.-0.-0**

Dart hated Seles at first. Hated his foster parents, hated his cold, narrow, _strange _house, and hated the mayor's daughter most of all. She'd heard he was an orphan, and predictably, this brought out every motherly instinct in her little body.

Dart took to being mothered about as well as could be expected.

On the bright fall morning on the log bridge, he'd been trying to outrun her as fast as his legs could take him. She trotted belligerently behind him the entire time, the words caught on her lips just waiting for a chance to escape, _Dart, you _have _to talk to me, you don't have any parents_! when the monster appeared.

Dart didn't debate coming to her defense, he just did. Instinctively. Of course, he couldn't think of anything more to do than shout and wave his arms widely, but it worked.

Afterwards, Shana had stared at him goggle-eyed, trying to wrap her head around the idea of a Dart who wasn't a victim she could play ministering angel to, and Dart realized that he wanted to do this sort of thing for the rest of his life.

**0.-0.-0**

His new parents terrified him. Not the fact that they exist, but because of the idea that they represented. That they were his _new _parents, as if his old ones never existed.

His new father was short and compact, with a large, hard belly and a boisterous sort of laugh. He worked in town. A brewer. He wasn't quiet. His hands were large and plump, not lean and calloused, and he never touched Dart save to pat him on the back every once in a while and say, nervously, _there's a good boy. _Having Dart in their home meant a purse from the coffers of Mille Seseau every year, to pay for the room and board of all the orphans of Neet. He treated Dart well, in his own way.

His new mother was wide and sturdy and pale-skinned, good Serdian peasant stock. She tried her best with him, but there was only so much she could do with a child who resented her more than he could ever fully articulate, who flinched away from every motherly gesture because she _wasn't _his mother, she wasn't short and hard-edged and wickedly funny and ferociously loving, she was, instead, a pale stranger, and he hated her for it.

When Dart ran away to chase down a bad dream a continent away, the pair of them breathed a sigh of relief, despite the fact that Mille Seseau would undoubtedly hear, and stop sending purses. Their responsibility for him was at an end.

**0.-0.-0**

His first night away from home, on the trail of the Black Monster, he curled up underneath an enormous tree, cold, hungry, and completely miserable.

His one thought before slipping into uneasy, uncomfortable sleep was, _what the _hell _am I doing?_

**0.-0.-0**

The whole five years he was away, the only person from Seles he ever thought of was Shana.

The reason for it never even crossed his mind.

He just hoped she was okay.

**0.-0.-0**


	2. Lavitz

**Five Truths**

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**Summary: Five truths about each of the Dragoons of Endiness.**

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His mother never wanted him in the army.

She begged Servi not to let him. She said it was too dangerous. She said the men were too rough, too uncouth, and, somewhat more cannily, that any advancement that came his way would be seen as favoritism, that they would never respect him.

When news of his father's death reached them, she thought that it might have put an end to the matter.

He joined the very next day. A private. First infantry.

**0.-0.-0**

By the time Lavitz became a knight, most of the romance had gone out of the idea.

However, there still existed a tradition that all knights of Basil must be knighted in person by the king. The fact that the king still wasn't shaving yet did nothing to dim the supernova of pride that burst in Lavitz's chest when that sword point touched his shoulders.

In all honesty, he didn't know what to think of the new king. He was young. He had a good head for policy on his shoulders. All in all, Lavitz thought that he was someone he could serve, as his father had served Carlos before him, and serve gladly.

The exact moment where he found himself willing to honestly swear life and limb to the service to King Albert came mere moments later.

King Albert sent him a quirked, nervous smile as his chancellor began rattling off the long pronouncement of Lavitz's new title and lands, his hands resting on the hilt of the sword he'd used to knight him, which stood point first on the flagstones.

Lavitz blinked, startled, the long, sonorous tones of the chancellor droning in his ears, as the king actually _rolled his eyes._

The court forever remembered Lavitz's ascent to knighthood as the one where the knight in question started snickering halfway through the ceremony.

**0.-0.-0**

His friendship with the king was always something of a puzzlement to Lavitz, though he never questioned the strength of the friendship itself.

All in all, he thought Albert was rather lonely.

And a _beast _with a javelin.

**0.-0.-0**

Lavitz was a good soul. Not a father to his men, as Servi was, but what could best be described as the world's stoutest big brother. He followed orders to the letter, and carried them out to the best of his ability.

Nothing he could have done would have prevented the outcome at the ford when the Sandorans fell upon them. Nothing he could have done could have prevented what befell his men.

That being said, it never occurred to him to question the reports given by the hooded councilor that led to his men being there in the first place.

**0.-0.-0**

In the end, all it came down to was his king, on his knees, with a knife at his throat.

There was no other choice he could have made. It was simple.

In Mayfil, the demon wrapped long fingers around his throat and dug its spurs into his back and whispered _What would you permit me, were I to allow you to see them again?_

There was no choice to be made. Not really. The path was clear.

**0.-0.-0**


	3. Rose

**Five Truths**

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**Summary: Five truths about the Dragoons of Endiness**

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She took the choker off once, perhaps four thousand years ago.

It had no effect at first. She sat, tensely, her hand wrapping a tight fist around the choker until she finally relaxed her grip.

Charle had warned her that she wasn't to remove it under any circumstances, that to remove it would restore time to her, would restore all those knife-edged thoughts and memories that she'd begged her to take away once.

Her thoughts remained steady and cool, as always one step removed from the world around her. She probed them cautiously, as one probes the broken edges of a molar with a tongue.

In the end, she found herself acting so skittishly, so afraid of the shape of her own thoughts, that it made her lips twitch in the merest flicker of a smile. Zieg would laugh, no doubt.

In the end, she bit her tongue bloody to keep the cry from tearing free from her throat, and half-strangled herself trying to fasten the catch once more.

**0.-0.-0**

She never like Kanzas, and she never trusted Damia.

Syuveil aroused only concern in her. He was a scholar. Weak, not suited for war. Belzac, a grudging respect. Shirley, a sister. Bound in battle and blood.

She looked at these new dragoons, and she saw none of the bonds that once held her. Only weariness.

The one thing that held her in their company was the glint of gold hair and the dull shine of red armor, the memory of a time gone by that she'd willed herself to forget millennia ago.

Perhaps these new dragoons were a coincidence, she thought. Perhaps, they too would pass shortly, and she would go on murdering for centuries more. Until then, she would follow a blue-eyed man in red armor, as always.

**0.-0.-0**

It was well within her abilities to save Lavitz.

In that forgotten cellar, as the others embroiled themselves in furious, whispered plan-making, she couldn't stop the thought from turning over and over again in her mind.

She could have saved him.

**0.-0.-0**

When her emotions began to slip past the confines of the choker once more, she hardly noticed at first, but then it was all she could do to stop them.

It began simply.

When she stopped thinking of the Wingly girl as that idiot dancer- when she began, in fact, to think of her as _Meru. _When she caught the Giganto's impassive eyes across the fire and saw there a depth of sorrow to rival her own. When she looked at Dart, and didn't see the shadow of a dead man she'd let slip through her fingers and instead saw an earnest, slightly dense young man with rather more good intentions than good sense.

It was when she actually found herself bickering over the finer points of Tiberoan history with Albert that she realized that she was actually a part of this group, and that there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

What shook her, truly shook her underneath the walls of centuries and sorrow and terrible duty that she'd built around herself, was that she didn't feel bothered to do anything about it.

**0.-0.-0**

She would know that face anywhere.

She knew it wasn't him.

And, she realized with some small degree of statement, she would let him die twice over again if it would keep her new comrades from harm.

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	4. Shana

**Five Truths**

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**Summary: Five truths about each of the Dragoons of Endiness.**

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Obviously this wasn't a love story.

Or at least, this wasn't the kind of love story Shana wanted anything to do with. If there was anything more embarrassing than to be broken out of prison by that boy you liked when you were seven because he was angry and awkward and loyal and had the bluest eyes you'd ever seen, she wanted no part of it. This wasn't a love story because seven-year-old Shana was the most embarrassing person on the planet, who love the neighbor boy, granted, but who also loved all those soppy stories about princesses in towers, who didn't know how to use a bow, and who hadn't shot a man in the throat in a mad panic the night Seles burned.

In a _proper _love story, Dart would have come back from his monumentally stupid five years of wandering with a little perspective. Not a _stupid _big sword and a _stupid _set of beginner's whiskers on his cheeks and the _stupid _idea that just because he'd fought his way in here meant that she had to stand behind him the whole time and wring her hands like a useless lump.

Of course, then she'd realized that fight after fight in an enclosed space with a long bow was far removed from carefully picking her targets from on top of her parent's barn while flames ate it away from beneath her, and he'd had to step in and protect her after all.

This wasn't a love story. He didn't come back flushed with ridiculous newfound love for her. He didn't respect her enough to let her take part in battle. He didn't think of her as anything more than a little sister with a tendency to toddle into ravines- a responsibility, nothing more.

The disappointment in realizing this was enough to break her heart all over again.

**0.-0.-0**

There was one essential truth to Shana, and that was that she cared. She cared deeply and profoundly for nearly everyone she ever met.

She quickly realized that the vast conspiracy that had dragged her off to prison and hamstrung Basil was more important than her love for an oblivious blue-eyed boy in battered red armor, and she behaved accordingly. This was bigger than her, and there was more to worry about than a boy who would not look at her, and would not look at her, no matter what. The fact that with so much warfare and chaos around her she was _still _hung up about this crippled her with shame nearly every time it crossed her mind.

She cared enough for those around her to make the decision to ensure their safety, rather than her own happiness.

She did not, however, phrase it in these terms. Privately, she thought of it as follows:

_So he thinks he can just shove me to the back with the potions and hope I'll just take care of things? _Hmph. _I'll show him, I'll- huh. Oh my. Oh dear. Oh dear. Haschel just hold on, I'll get this tied up, please stop bleeding please stop bleeding please don't die I can take care of this I will take care of you please stop._

**0.-0.-0**

Until she became a Dragoon, Shana had never occupied a space of power.

Until she'd clawed her way into the skies with wings of glass and silk and somersaulted backwards to draw a bead on a target, poised and flexible as some unreachable goddess of the moon, and fire downwards with all the strength of a centuries-dead dragon, she never recognized it.

With her newfound power came the realization that with all this raw strength at her disposal came an even greater obligation to protect those around her. To pick her targets carefully, to see to her comrades, to cut short the swathe of destruction tearing across Endiness by every scrap of strength she had to her name.

She knew, right then, that she never wanted this feeling to end, that she never wanted this rush of divine power to stop pulsing through her veins.

The way that Dart stared at her after she'd called down an impromptu meteor shower on a pack of bandits didn't hurt either.

**0.-0.-0**

When he kissed her, there on the tower beneath the moonlight and stars, she would gladly have given up all of it. The world. The sweetness of dragon magic running through her veins. Everything they fought for, all of it. All to have the pad of his thumb rub along the back of her neck and his eyelashes to brush the high arch of her cheek as he takes a ragged breath and kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her, until she thinks she might burst.

**0.-0.-0**

She blamed herself for all of it, later. For that one, treacherous thought beneath the moon.

This wasn't a love story, after all.

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	5. Damia

**Five Truths**

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**Summary: Five truths about each of the dragoons of Endiness.**

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Damia didn't understand that she was dead.

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While Belzac rumbled his worry and displeasure one tower over, while Syuveil watched every word he wrote vanish one after the other, while Kanzas screamed his throat bloody in the small hours of the night, Damia sat in her water-dappled tower and remained calm.

For eleven thousand years, she sat in a water-dappled room in a forgotten tower and thought that if she continued to be patient and continued to be calm and continued to wait quietly in her tower that someone would come, that someone would take her by the hand and lead her to somewhere else. For Damia, eleven-thousand years barely covered the reach of one miserable afternoon.

It never even crossed her mind to take that step herself.

**0.-0.-0**

She died in fire. She died choking. She died because she was too slow, because she had never been much of a warrior, and because her imagination had never been big enough to include survival beyond a certain point.

She died protecting no one. She died, perhaps, because she was mistakenly believed to be capable of anything more than being protected.

**0.-0.-0**

Shirley tried reaching all four of them. Belzac couldn't bring himself to look at her. Syuveil couldn't tear his eyes free from his books. Kanzas was beyond seeing anything.

Damia saw her every time. Her hands curled into shaking claws on the rim of the fountain where she perched. Her face oddly still.

The others always attacked, eventually. When pushed beyond a certain point.

With Damia, it was hard to tell when the change would come. One minute she'd be rising, her face breaking, her arms outstretched, and in the space of a blink there she'd be sitting again, her lip twisted in her teeth, her eyes empty, waiting for someone to appear. Every time.

**0.-0.-0**

For eleven thousand years Damia sat in a water-dappled room in a forgotten tower and thought that if she continued to be patient and continued to be calm and continued to wait quietly in her tower that someone would come.

When they did (_soon, I expect. Yes, very soon. They won't forget me), _she would step outside. The sun would break across her face. The cold would leave her bones. They would take her away from here.

It wasn't remarkable that she had remained for so long, that Mayfil had not claimed her.

What was remarkable was that she was the only one of them waiting.

**0.-0.-0**


	6. Zieg

**Five Truths**

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**Summary: Five truths about each of the Dragoons of Endiness.**

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Zieg always defined himself by the people around him. It was perhaps his biggest flaw.

Granted, Kanzas would have chosen a different one. He said as much, once. He clapped Zieg on the shoulder with one rusty clawed hand, soot and blood streaked across his face from the last battle, and said with tired affection, "You just _think _too much, Boss."

**0.-0.-0**

Zieg was chosen.

He was chosen by the dragon in its dying moment, the mad glare fading from its eyes as Zieg jerked his sword from its neck and stared in puzzlement at the gleaming shape that slithered forth from the wound. A red stone the size of his palm. When he picked it up, he felt nothing at first, a vague heat in his fist, and then the dragon swarmed up through the stone and sank its claws and teeth into his soul.

He was chosen by the Diaz, by the Emperor himself. Zieg was the first of the dragoons, the first mad, winged creature to fly to the frozen North and the emperor's hidden city. First and greatest and best beloved, or so the stories told.

He was chosen, in the end, by Rose.

She was young. Too young, he would have said, and at first he denied her. He could bend under the weight of his responsibilities. He could keep his mind separate from the dragon, and he could weigh the lives of his comrades against the ambitions of his emperor, but not this. Not the weight of her love.

Kanzas didn't like it, but he understood. "You wear me out, Boss," was all he'd ever say about it. Bleak, but unsurprised.

**0.-0.-0**

For a slave with a scored back and Kadessa's dust still in his nostrils, for a man who came from _nothing_, commanding the emperor's armies seemed the greatest happiness one could achieve.

But happiness, oddly enough, lay in something much more mundane. The odd, warped sense of _family_ the dragoons carved out for themselves rapidly grew to become the center of Zieg's world, the charts by which he guided himself. They were there to ground him, to support him, and to be at his back when he needed it. They were an anchor chain seven-strong, and Zieg grew to believe in it so strongly that he failed to notice the first few links pulling loose.

He would not forgive himself for Damia's death. Or Syuveil's, mere weeks later.

Even when Kanzas hauled him into a chair and poured him drink after drink until his resolve broke under it, he would not see the blame as belonging to anyone but himself. Not to Frahma, who commanded their deaths. Or to Diaz, who orchestrated them.

"Let it _go_," said Kanzas wearily, the strain showing on his sharp, narrow face, but ultimately it was Rose who saw to him. She took him wordlessly by the hand and she pulled him into her arms, and then into her bed, and Zieg finally gave in.

He would never forgive himself for that either.

**0.-0.-0**

Dying came as something of a relief, actually.

He watched them all go. Every last one. Shirley, rigid with hauteur, her body bent in one last, perfect arch as she let the arrow fly, Belzac crumbling behind her. Kanzas, his face pulled taut in a desperate grin, vanishing in a crazed concussive burst of flame.

Frahama whispered acidly into his ear as death took them both, a litany of nonsense spoken to a man too far gone to care, but then Zieg saw Rose. Rose, frightened but alive, her face shining with hope.

_That's all right then, _was his last conscious thought. She was alive. He had not failed her. And in death he would find his way back to all of them in time. The others would wait for him. Kanzas would be the first to greet him- as he was when he was younger, before the dragon took his cockiness and lack of conviction and turned it into an awful hunger that ate him hollow.

_That's all right then, _he thought with dizzy gratitude, and let go just as Rose's fingers closed around his wrist.

**0.-0.-0**

Zieg died with purpose. He died young and heroically. He died in a way that he could take pride in, such as it was, and he died with no small amount of relief that it was finally over.

He awoke an old man, a hundred miles and eleven thousand years from home, with no one and no duty to guide him.

Staring at the shape the world had taken around him in the time he had been uncomplainingly dead, he found himself at a loss. He didn't think of Damia, who had died long before her life could take the shape of much of anything, or of Syuveil, who had died before his research and efforts could remotely bear fruit. He didn't think of Kanzas, who would have shoved him forward with both hands and ordered him to go and fucking well take this second chance for what it was _now, _damnit.

_No, _was his thought, and with it came only a mute horror. _No. _

**0.-0.-0**


End file.
